tqa | September 21, 2006A senior science reporter at the journal Nature, Declan Butler, put out an urgent request for bloggers to help draw attention to the plight of the Tripoli Six - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician that are on trial accused of deliberately (as agents of Israel and the United States) infecting 400 Libyan children with the HiV virus while working at a Libyan hospital. An independent scientific review conducted by highly respected French and Italian researchers found no evidence of deliberate infection, but their review was discarded because it disagreed with the conclusions of…
tqa | September 20, 2006As you may have seen over at Pharyngula, we've got some creationists running for the school board out here. That's not a good thing, but a few different events over the last couple of weeks have given me a lot of hope for this state.
Right now, I'm not very worried about the anti-evolution school board candidates - at least not the two that have made their positions known (Henry Hoeft and Brian Kessler). Right now, they are two of the fifteen candidates running for three "no departmental residency" seats on the board. The field will be narrowed from fifteen to six after the primary election…
tqa | September 19, 2006...the South shall rise again. If they get better intelligence, anyway.
Senator Saxby Chambliss (the Vietnam-era "bad knee" 4Fer who sleezed into his seat by attacking Max Cleland's patriotism in 2002) just provided us with a prime example of his own credentials as a patriot. A Confederate patriot, that is:
When sources first contacted HOH, they thought they remembered Chambliss say, "We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we'd be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln."
In fairness, I should probably mention that Chambliss' office claims that this is a…
tqa | September 13, 2006Last night, around 1 in the morning, I was woken up by a lot of strange noises coming from downstairs. I couldn't quite place the noises, but there were definitely animals involved. I scraped myself out of bed and went to take a look. It turns out that my cat had brought home a playmate - a Kolea.
The kolea is the Hawaiian name for the Pacific Golden Plover. This is a smallish seabird, but it's a tough one. Their annual migration involves nonstop overwater flight from Alaska to Hawaii, so they've got stamina. They also have a very sharp beak. This turned out to be a bad thing for the cat.…
tqa | September 11, 2006It's been five years and a day since the terrible reality of international terrorism came crashing down on our heads. In that time, our nation has changed a great deal, and not all for the better. I say that we have changed, and not that we have been changed for a reason: many of the changes are things that we have, collectively, inflicted upon ourselves.
Some, right about now, will want to argue with that. A few will insist that all of the changes were caused by the enemy without, by the terrorists, and that we had nothing to do with it. Others will be able to be honest enough with…
tqa | September 7, 2006For my contribution to the Panda's Thumb's ongoing review of Jonathan Wells' new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (PIGDID), I will be reviewing chapters four and five. Chapter Four covers the record of evolution that is contained in the DNA of all living things, and Chapter Five discusses speciation. A full review of each of these chapters is going to take a while and wind up being rather long. I've divided the reviews up into chunks, and I'm going to post each chunk as I finish it. Comments are more than welcome, and might be helpful when the time…
tqa | September 7, 2006I'm bowing to peer-pressure and joining the throng of SciBlings who have admitted to taking the nerd test. Orac's been trying real hard to claim dominance in this category, and having met the man I am reluctant to argue with him, but it would seem like quite a few of us are giving him a run for his money.
For the record, I scored just as highly as he did on the nerd test, which means that we are equally nerdy, or that we are not actually equally nerdy but one of us knows how to game the test, or that neither of us is all that nerdy but both of us can game the test. (And I should get bonus…
tqa | September 7, 2006In the Doonesbury storyline that began on Monday, Garry Trudeau managed to capture what modern technology has done for deployed families far, far better than anyone I've seen before. With many of the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan operating from more-or-less permanent bases, communications between the front lines and those left at home are a hell of a lot better than they've ever been.
In many ways, this is a mixed blessing.
At the camp my wife is based out of in Iraq, she has easy access to a payphone and can buy phone cards that allow her to call home at reasonable rates. She…
tqa | September 6, 2006Janet has challenged all of us to a nerd-off. I'd love to participate, but before I can I'm going to need to figure out if I'm qualified. It's not easy. Identifying nerds and geeks isn't something that you can do just based on looks, or a superficial knowledge of habits and personality. Determining whether one is a nerd is a complex procedure, requiring the analysis of a large number of interacting variables. To aid in the self-identification of nerds, I've devised the following checklist:
You might be a science nerd if...
The ratio of journals to magazines on your coffee table and/or in your…
tqa | September 6, 2006Looking through my email today, I see that Reed Cartwright has forwarded yet another news article about someone or another ranting about the dangers caused by the presence of so many "liberals" in higher education. About the only surprise was the source of this round of complaints: Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who was complaining about academics in his country.
Hmmmm. I wonder if we should send D-Ho over to help him root out the most dangerous of the bunch.
On second thought, probably not. There are just some things that I wouldn't even wish on Ahmadinejad.
tqa | September 1, 2006Over at Pharyngula, PZ is beating up Starbucks over one of the quotes on their cups. The quote is by Discovery Institute fellow Wesley Smith, and it reads:The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human? Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights. Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest.
There are some good reasons to doubt the wisdom of selecting a quote by this particular author, but I think that the…
tqa | August 30, 2006Via a National Geographic research team, we learn that there is still a thriving market for ivory - protection laws and biodiversity be damned. The pictures below the fold, taken from the National Geographic website, are for any of you who might be considering buying something made of ivory in the near future. Be warned: it's not a mealtime image.
It's good to know just how ineffective anti-poaching measures really are in Chad, I guess.
tqa | August 30, 2006This week's Ask a Scienceblogger Question involves an article in The National Review Online that was clearly written by a complete bloody moron. The question is this:I read this article in the NRO, and the author actually made some interesting arguments. 'Basically,' he said, 'I am questioning the premise that [global warming] is a problem rather than an opportunity.' Does he have a point?
The author of the paper actually does have a point, but not much of one, and it does not justify his line of argument.
If the point that the author is trying to make is that global warming can create…
tqa | August 29, 2006It would seem that we had a little bit of an earthquake last night. The quake is listed as having a magnitude of 3.7 by the USGS, and was felt on the islands of Oahu and Molokai. My first person account of the experience is below the fold.
I didn't notice a damn thing.
My daughter did, though, and so did my next door neighbors. My daughter came downstairs right after the quake, and told me that something had just pushed up under her bed. Naturally, being the calm, kind, considerate father that I am, I told her to stop fooling around and get back to bed - and got even firmer about the whole…
tqa | August 28, 2006The paperback edition of SciBling Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science comes out today. I read it a while back, and I'm looking forward to going through it again.
This is one of those books that everyone should read. Chris does a fantastic job of documenting case after case after case where science has been misrepresented and/or ignored in efforts to help advance the Republican political agenda. People can debate whether or not the Republicans are consciously trying to downplay science, but the effects are the same. To see that, you need look no further than the recent episode…
tqa | August 25, 2006You are teaching the introductory "How to use the microscope" lab. Your students have done a cheek swab, made a slide, and are looking at it under the scope. A young woman in the class flags you down, and asks you to help her identify something on the slide. The object in question is smaller than the other cells on the slide, but is well preserved and clearly visible. It has a round head and long tail.
What do you do?
Do you:
A) In shock and unable to help yourself, say "That's sperm!" at a volume clearly heard throuhout the classroom
B) Whisper or write the word "sperm" so that only the…
tqa | August 25, 2006It's been a while since I've done one of these, so here goes.
This one looks a little more eclecitc than usual.
1: Flags of Freedom Neil Young
2: Begin the Begin REM
3: The Philosopher's Drinking Song Monty Python
4: For What It's Worth Rush
5: Lookin' for a Leader Neil Young
6: Me and Bobby McGee Janice Joplin
7: Democracy Leonard Cohen
8: Linger…
tqa | August 24, 2006For those of us who have been wondering why the FDA concluded that Plan B can safely be used by 17-year-olds, but should only be sold to those 18 and over, there is finally an answer: the FDA is afraid that pharmacists and pharmacy cashiers cannot correctly subtract. If you go to the FDA's latest website on Plan B, you will find links to pdf files for two memos, one by Center for Drug Evaluation and Research director Steven Galson, and one written by Acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach.
The Galson memo is largely silent on the 18-year-old age restriction, saying only:Regarding the…
tqa | August 24, 2006Plan B has been approved, and the right-to-lifers are screaming bloody murder and threatening to sue, but they aren't the ones who lost. We are. We, in this case, means anyone who has an interest in good healthcare. We, in this case, means anyone who thinks that politics should not be involved in the approval of medications in this country. We, in this case, means anyone who believes that someone else's faith does not belong in their bedroom or body. We, in this case, means everyone who isn't part of the reactionary Christianist wing of the Republican Party. We all lost. They are crying…
tqa | August 23, 2006Good rule of thumb for graduate classes:
If discussing a paper that you have not actually managed to finish (or possibly start) reading, quickly flip about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way into it, read a paragraph, and come up with a question/discussion point.